The Stone War by Madeleine E. Robins

Author:Madeleine E. Robins [Robins, Madeleine E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781466806504
Google: EojpNbteeFEC
Amazon: B006JQU838
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1999-08-15T07:00:00+00:00

11

IT took a week or so for the focus of the Store to change. There was less building and more training, repairing, shoring things up. Tietjen hated the change he had insisted on, as the Store concentrated on survival today and tomorrow, and put the future aside. The foraging parties went out armed, and a part of everyone’s day was spent learning to shoot or fight; Elena Cruz, in charge of the kitchen, turned out to be fast and dangerous with a staff, of all things, and gave classes every afternoon; Ketch taught what she called “the cutting arts,” anything to do with knives. Fratelone was their expert with guns. Tietjen found himself frustrated with Fratelone; he would have put the man in charge of defense, made him the general in their army, but Fratelone refused the responsibility. “I can’t do strategy and stuff,” he said. “I’m a soldier, Boss. I don’t know how to do that other stuff.”

What other stuff? Tietjen wondered. He would have kept after Fratelone and nagged him into taking the job, but Barbara talked him out of it.

“It’s a wise man who knows what he can and cannot do,” she reminded him, late one night when Bobby Fratelone had slouched off to bed.

“He’s the closest thing we have to a real fighter, Barbara. We need him.”

She shook her head. “John, would you really feel comfortable following Bobby into a fight when he was calling the shots?”

“Sure, of course—” Tietjen said.

“Really?” Her tone was very dry. “Think about it for a second.”

He did, and came to the crux of the problem. “I can’t do it! I don’t know anything about fighting—”

“But you know about planning,” McGrath said. “You’re the strategy guy. Bobby’s the—what do you call it? The enforcer.”

Tietjen gave up trying to change the way things were.

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